Several prominent St. Bernard Parish figures -- one of whom is now an elected official -- are accused of forcing out-of-state businessmen to pay up in order to secure lucrative work in the parish after Hurricane Katrina.

Three demolition contractors are listed as plaintiffs. They say they want to clean up the way business is done in St. Bernard and get back the money that they say rightfully belongs to them.

The claims focus on St. Bernard Parish, specifically. Damage there was extensive. Hurricane Katrina pushed a wall of water 25 feet high across the parish, claiming 129 lives and destroying 26,000 homes.

In the chaos after the storm, parish leaders rushed to clean up, awarding a $370 million federally-funded contract to help demolish damaged structures and remove debris.

Demolition contractor Stephen Farmer, a Mississippi businessman, is one of those who brought crews and heavy equipment to St. Bernard Parish and got to work.

“I wanted to go down there and help people clean up,” he said. “We had two skid steers, which are like Bobcats … We had an excavator -- we call them track hoes, here. We probably had 12 18-wheeler trucks with trailers we hauled debris with.”

Farmer had his own equipment, workers and insurance within weeks of arriving in Chalmette in late 2005. He was on the job as a subcontractor for Kenner-based D&O Contractors, which was working under the lead government contractor -- Unified Recovery Group.

“We were working, and I had my own contract and everything was working out great,” Farmer said. “Every day we led the board. If we wasn't the leaders on the board in yardage, we were second.”

Then in spring 2006, Farmer said he arrived at the dump with a load of debris and was told his company’s name had been changed.

“I told him, ‘You put the wrong name on the ticket.’ (He said,) ‘No I didn't. I was told this morning. They had a meeting. They had a meeting every morning to change your name to St. Bernard Debris.’ I said, ‘What is this about?’ He said, ‘I don't know what it's about, but this is where the (expletive) begins. You better watch out.’”

Farmer said he became suspicious and was even more suspicious when he said his bosses, Mike O’Malley and Dan Wagner with D&O Contractors, told him to go see St. Bernard Parish attorneys Lance Licciardi and Randy Nunez.

“They said I needed to go see them and work a deal out with them,” Farmer said. “I said, ‘What deal? I don't need a deal. I've got my own contract.’”

Farmer knew Licciardi and Nunez.

“They used to have a crew before me and then they lost their crew -- lost all their equipment, and so they weren't in the business,” Farmer said. “I couldn't believe it. I said, ‘That's crazy. Randy and Lance are lawyers. They know it's not right. This is crazy.’ Why would I pay them for work that I’m doing? I thought it was a joke.”

But it wasn’t funny a couple months later.

Farmer said that’s when O’Malley told him that in order to pick up his most recent check, he’d have to go to Licciardi and Nunez’s office. He reluctantly headed to West Judge Perez Drive.

“I was just told, ‘You got to work out a deal with us, and you're going to pay us $1 a yard and half your tear down fee.’ Why should I pay someone for anything when I own all the equipment? I pay all the insurance. I buy all the fuel. I pay all my men. How could anybody tell me I've got to pay somebody for work?” Farmer asked.

Farmer explained that they told him, “You’re paying for protection. That’s the way we do it in Louisiana. You can take your country (expletive) back to Mississippi if you don’t want to pay.”

Fearing financial ruin, Farmer said he eventually agreed to the terms but never signed a contract.

“I didn't have money to stay down there,” he said. “I didn't have money to come home.”

He started writing checks every week. He showed the checks to the WDSU I-Team, including one to Lance Licciardi for $15,286 and another to a business called St. Bernard Debris, which according to the Secretary of State’s Office, is based out of Licciardi and Nunez’s office on Judge Perez Drive. The business is run by the two men.

Farmer showed the I-Team dozens of checks, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Every time, I would ask, ‘Why do I have to pay this? Why am I doing that?’ I was told, ‘That's just the way it is. It is what it is ... We're not going into that.’ Whatever happened, happened,” Farmer said.

The story was the same for other subcontractors, said Bob Casey with Truck and Equipment Enterprises. He came from Alabama to work in St. Bernard Parish. He spoke to the I-Team over the phone from his home -- now in Illinois.

“You'd have to pay somebody just to get to work in that parish,” Casey said. “What they would do is they'd bring you in there. You'd come in there and they'd try to starve you out until you signed on. They'd starve you out until you did sign on with somebody.”

The claims eventually landed in front of federal investigators, which in turn led to something else cited in the lawsuit: recordings of conversations involving Farmer and those he said extorted from him. Those recorded conversations are also part of the litigation.

The defendants' attorneys have asked for the case to be dismissed, citing the statute of limitations, among other concerns.

However, Farmer’s attorney argues that the statute of limitations in a civil RICO case, which is four years, shouldn’t apply to his client. His attorney said there are exceptions to the rule, and one of the exceptions is in play because Farmer spent years cooperating with the FBI before proceeding with the civil case.

We asked for interviews with Licciardi, Nunez, O’Malley and Wagner -- or their representatives -- but they declined.

Attorneys for Licciardi and Nunez sent the I-Team a statement that reads in part, “It appears that Mr. Farmer is trying to use you and your news organization to damage my clients’ reputations out of malice and, in effort, to manufacture settlement interest before the court issues an order on dismissal. The allegations made by Mr. Farmer against my clients are false, frivolous and harmful, and a substantive response will be made in the civil action before my clients provide any substantive commentary to news organizations.”

An attorney representing D&O Contractors told the I-Team that the claims are baseless and “fiction.”

DiFatta’s attorney had no comment.

Though the company had an oversight role in the cleanup contracts, Unified Recovery Group is not named as a defendant or accused of any wrongdoing.

The company told the I-Team in a statement, "We worked hard to ensure that all of our subcontractors performed their work ably, in accordance with the terms of their contracts and in strict compliance with all laws. We are confident that, by and large, that is exactly what they did. Had we received any credible evidence otherwise, we certainly would have addressed the situation."

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